An organisation pushing the Green party to equate Zionism with racism has encouraged people to join the party specifically to support that agenda, and has links to activists who say that pro-Israel “infiltrators” must be rooted out of the UK, the Guardian has learned. Some Green members are increasingly concerned that the party risks being manipulated by extremist outsiders over a motion to be voted on at the party’s annual conference this weekend, which states that “Zionism is racism”. Some Jewish members have said privately they fear it will be difficult for them to remain in the party if the policy passes.
Zack Polanski, who leads the Green party in England and Wales, has come under pressure to take a definitive stance on the motion amid worries the controversy will harm the party in next week’s key Holborn and St Pancras byelection, where Polanski is seeking to win Keir Starmer’s former seat. The motion came top of a members’ ballot of policy issues to be debated at the event in Brighton. It calls for a single Palestinian state and, if passed, it would mean members who support Zionism – the movement for a Jewish state – could be disciplined for racism.
The controversy reflects a longstanding debate about the definition of Zionism, the political movement whose supporters see it as the necessary struggle for a Jewish homeland, and whose critics see it as a colonial project that has inevitably led to the dispossession of Palestinians. The term Zionist is, meanwhile, sometimes used as a synonym for Jew by antisemites. Efforts to push the policy have been led by Greens for Palestine (GfP), a group not formally affiliated with the party.
In repeated social media posts over recent months, GfP has urged backers of the idea to sign up as Green members specifically to get the motion debated at the conference and then adopted. Polanski last week declared he was anti-Zionist, adding that Zionism was a form of racism because it involved the displacement and genocide of Palestinians. But he has supported amendments to tone down the motion.
Lubna Speitan, a leading member of GfP who co-authored the motion, has rejected the amendments. A key member of AZM is David Miller, a former academic who was sacked by Bristol University over his criticisms of Israel, and subsequently won a tribunal case after it ruled he had been discriminated against because of his anti-Zionist views. He now presents a show for Press TV, the Iranian state channel.
In social media posts, Miller has argued that Zionists have, as “infiltrators and subversives”, gained access to not just all UK political parties but also “the media, entertainment industries, the law, financial institutions, sports and all sorts of apparently obscure parts of the UK”. GfP and AZM have collaborated on a series of social media posts, and Speitan attended an AZM meeting in London this year. In a video posted by AZM about the meeting, Speitan said it was important for anti-Zionist groups to collaborate.
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